Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work
Table of Contents
Organisations across industries are waking up to a stark reality: managing psychosocial hazards at work is no longer optional.
A safe workplace now means protecting both the mental and physical health of employees, especially in today’s demanding work environment.
The impact of poorly managed psychosocial hazards cannot be overstated. The Return to Work 2013-14 Survey Analysis from Safe Work Australia revealed that work-related psychological injuries require longer recovery times on average compared to physical injuries, result in more time away from work, and come with higher costs for organisations.
However, the effects extend beyond just the financial. Uncontrolled psychosocial risks can severely impact worker well-being, team morale, broader organisational culture, and performance.
In this blog post, we’ll explore psychosocial hazards in detail – what they are, how to identify them, and most importantly, the steps your organisation can take to effectively eliminate or minimise the risks they pose.
What Are Psychosocial Hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are factors in the design or management of work that increase the risk of work-related stress and can lead to psychological or physical harm.
The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 defines a psychosocial hazard as:
“a thing or situation that may cause or contribute to a psychological injury or illness.”
Here are the 14 most common psychosocial hazards in the workplace:
| Hazard | Description | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1. High or low job demands | Sustained high or low levels of mental, physical, or emotional effort required | • Unreasonable time pressures • Highly monotonous tasks • Work significantly below skill level |
| 2. Low job control | Little worker control over how or when work is done | • Tightly scripted work • Unable to adapt work to changing situations • Little influence over breaks |
| 3. Poor support | Inadequate practical assistance, resources, and emotional support from supervisors and colleagues | • Insufficient training • Broken equipment • Unempathetic leadership |
| 4. Lack of role clarity | Unclear, frequently changing, or conflicting roles, responsibilities, and expectations | • Conflicting instructions • Missing task information • Frequently changing priorities |
| 5. Poor organisational change management | Poorly planned, communicated, or managed change | • Insufficient consultation on changes • Poor communication • Inadequate support through change |
| 6. Inadequate recognition and reward | Imbalance between effort and recognition, unfair, or inconsistent rewards | • Unfair negative feedback • Insufficient positive feedback • Favouritism in rewards |
| 7. Poor organisational justice | Unfair, discriminatory, or inconsistent decisions, policies, and their application | • Inconsistent disciplinary actions • Allocating work based on friendships • Not accommodating reasonable needs |
| 8. Exposure to traumatic events or material | Witnessing or being exposed to potentially traumatic events or content | • Exposure to injured persons • Natural disasters • Descriptions of traumatic events |
| 9. Remote or isolated work | Work isolated from assistance of others due to location, time, or nature of work | • Working alone • Long travel times • Limited communication |
| 10. Poor physical environment | Exposure to unpleasant, poor quality, or hazardous working conditions | • Hazardous tasks • Uncomfortable conditions impacting concentration • Poorly maintained equipment and amenities |
| 11. Violence and aggression | Exposure to violence, threats, or aggressive behaviours from others | • Physical assault • Verbal abuse • Intimidating body language from customers, clients, or colleagues |
| 12. Bullying | Repeated unreasonable behaviour creating a risk to health and safety | • Abusive language • Malicious criticism • Deliberately withholding resources or information needed for work |
| 13. Harassment including sexual harassment | Unwelcome behaviour based on personal characteristics or of a sexual nature | • Offensive jokes • Unwanted sexual advances • Crude sexual remarks |
| 14. Conflict or poor workplace relationships | Frequent disagreements, disparaging remarks, or interpersonal conflict between colleagues | • Arguments between workers • Deliberately excluding a worker • Unhelpful criticism from supervisors |
These hazards can be present in any industry or occupation, but some sectors such as healthcare, education, public administration, and safety may increase exposure to particular hazards like occupational violence, emotional demands, and exposure to traumatic events.
Psychosocial hazards can lead to both psychological and physical harm. Psychological injuries can include anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and sleep disorders. Physical impacts include musculoskeletal disorders, chronic disease, and injuries from accidents due to fatigue or distraction.
A one-off exposure to a psychosocial hazard may not create a risk to health and safety. However, frequent, prolonged, or severe exposure to one or a combination of hazards is likely to cause harm. This is because of how our bodies respond to stress.
How Do Psychosocial Hazards Cause Harm?
When we perceive a threat or experience stress, our bodies respond by activating the autonomic nervous system and releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
This triggers a range of physiological changes, such as:
- Increased heart rate and blood pressure
- Rapid breathing
- Tensed muscles
- Sweating
Energy is diverted away from processes like digestion, growth, and reproduction, and shunted towards systems needed for survival.
This ‘fight or flight’ response is helpful in true emergency situations where we need to act quickly. But when it’s repeatedly triggered by stressors at work, over time it can cause both psychological and physical damage.
Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, cause brain changes affecting memory and cognition, increase risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes, and lead to anxiety and depression.
Some psychosocial hazards like emotional demands or exposure to violence can also cause harm through trauma. A traumatic event is one that is deeply distressing or disturbing. Exposure to trauma, either directly experiencing or witnessing it, can overwhelm a person’s ability to cope and lead to psychological injury.
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Legal Duties Related to Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work
Under the WHS Act, a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) has a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that workers and other persons are not exposed to risks to their psychological health and safety arising from the business or undertaking.
The WHS Act defines health to include both physical and psychological health. Therefore, the duties related to health and safety apply equally to psychological health as they do to physical health and safety.
The model WHS laws set out specific requirements for PCBUs to manage psychosocial risks.
PCBUs must:
- Identify reasonably foreseeable hazards that could give rise to psychosocial risks
- Eliminate risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and if not reasonably practicable, minimise risks so far as is reasonably practicable
- Maintain control measures so they remain effective
- Review control measures
PCBUs must consider all relevant matters when determining what control measures to implement, including:
- The duration, frequency, and severity of the exposure to hazards
- How hazards may interact or combine to produce new or changed risks
- The design of work tasks, systems of work, and the work environment
- Information, training, and supervision provided to workers
Other key duties relevant to psychosocial hazards include requirements for PCBUs to consult with workers, provide comprehensive training, and ensure health monitoring is provided where there is a risk of exposure to certain hazards.
Officers, such as company directors, have a duty under the WHS Act to exercise due diligence to ensure the PCBU complies with its duties. For psychosocial risks, this means officers must take reasonable steps to gain an understanding of psychosocial hazards and risks associated with the operations of the business. They must ensure the PCBU has appropriate resources and processes to eliminate or minimise risks to psychological health and safety.
Our Psychosocial Hazards Training Online for Leaders and Executives equips your management team with the knowledge they need to meet WHS responsibilities and effectively manage workplace psychosocial hazards.
Workers also have duties under WHS laws to take reasonable care for their own and others’ health and safety, comply with reasonable instructions, and cooperate with reasonable health and safety policies or procedures that have been notified to them.
Provide your workforce with the essential understanding and tools to contribute to a safe and healthy work environment through our Psychosocial Hazards Training Online for Employees.
The Risk Management Process for Psychosocial Hazards
To meet their WHS duties, PCBUs must manage psychosocial risks by implementing a systematic process to identify psychosocial hazards, assess the risks, implement control measures, and review the effectiveness of those controls.
1. Identifying Psychosocial Hazards
The first step in managing psychosocial risks is to identify the psychosocial hazards present in your workplace.
Psychosocial hazards can arise from a range of work-related factors, so it’s important to consider the hazards holistically.
Some key things to consider include:
- Job characteristics and work environment, e.g. job demands, level of control, available supports and resources, role clarity, change management, organisational justice, remote or isolated work, and the physical working environment.
- Workplace relationships and interactions, e.g. conflict, poor workplace relationships, violence, bullying, and harassment.
Consultation with workers is critical to identifying psychosocial hazards. Workers have first-hand experience of the hazards, and often suggestions for how to control the risks. Consultation can take different forms, such as team meetings, focus groups, interviews and surveys. The consultation methods need to be accessible and appropriate for your workers.
It’s also important to review available information like incident reports, complaints, absenteeism and turnover data, and results from worker surveys. This data can reveal trends or ‘hot spots’ that need attention.
The People at Work online risk assessment tool offers a structured, evidence-based approach to identifying psychosocial hazards. Developed by workplace mental health experts, it’s available for free to Australian businesses and can seamlessly complement your existing hazard identification processes.
2. Assessing Psychosocial Risks
Once you’ve identified the psychosocial hazards, the next step is to assess the associated risks. This involves considering the severity of potential harm, likelihood of the hazard occurring, and therefore the overall level of risk.
Factors to consider when assessing severity of harm include:
- Whether the hazard could lead to psychological harm or physical injury
- Potential consequences like time off work or impact on personal life
- Whether the hazard could cause short-term or long-term harm
When assessing likelihood, consider:
- How often and for how long are workers exposed to the hazard? Frequent or prolonged exposure increases likelihood of harm.
- How severe is the exposure? More intense hazards are likely to cause harm sooner.
- Are there any factors that could increase susceptibility? E.g. workers who are inexperienced, fatigued, or have a pre-existing psychological condition may be more vulnerable.
Consider how hazards might interact or combine to increase the risk. For example, the risk of customer aggression may be higher in situations where workers are also experiencing high work demands and lack of co-worker support.
A risk matrix can help you determine the level of risk by categorising risks as low, moderate, high, or extreme based on the combined assessment of likelihood and severity. The level of risk will guide the prioritisation and urgency of required control measures.
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3. Controlling Psychosocial Risks
The most important step in the risk management process is implementing control measures to eliminate the hazard or, if that’s not reasonably practicable, minimise the risks so far as is reasonably practicable.
The model WHS Regulations, as stated in the approved Code of Practice, require duty holders to work through a hierarchy of control measures when managing risks. The hierarchy provides practical guidance and ranks control measures from the highest level of protection and reliability to the lowest. You must always aim to eliminate risks, as this is the most effective control.
If eliminating a risk to health or safety is not reasonably practicable, you must minimise it by working through the following options in the hierarchy:
- Substitution – replace the hazard with something safer, e.g. replace a hazardous chemical with a safer one.
- Isolation – physically separate people from the hazard, e.g. using remote controls to operate machinery.
- Engineering controls – physical control measures including mechanical devices or processes, e.g. using trolleys to move heavy loads.
- Administrative controls – work methods or procedures designed to minimise exposure to a hazard, e.g. job rotation, regular rest breaks.
- Personal protective equipment (PPE) – e.g. protective eyewear, earplugs.
The control measures you implement need to be tailored to your workplace and the specific hazards identified. A combination of control measures will usually be required to effectively manage psychosocial hazards.
Some examples of effective control measures for common psychosocial hazards include:
| Hazard | Control Measure | Level of Control |
|---|---|---|
| High workloads and demands | • Redesign jobs to reduce excessive demands • Provide additional resources and support • Develop policies for managing workloads and overtime | • Elimination • Engineering • Administrative |
| Poor workplace relationships | • Develop and promote policies for acceptable behaviours • Provide training in communication and conflict resolution • Encourage reporting and promptly address issues | • Administrative • Administrative • Administrative |
| Lack of role clarity | • Ensure clear job descriptions and performance standards • Provide induction and ongoing training • Implement regular performance feedback and development processes | • Administrative • Administrative • Administrative |
| Remote or isolated work | • Provide reliable communication channels and emergency procedures • Ensure regular contact and support from supervisors and co-workers • Conduct regular safety checks and provide duress alarms | • Engineering • Administrative • Engineering |
| Traumatic events | • Eliminate or reduce exposure to potentially traumatic events • Provide resilience training and post-incident support • Develop and rehearse emergency response plans | • Elimination • Administrative • Administrative |
4. Reviewing Control Measures
The final step in the risk management cycle is reviewing your control measures to ensure they are working as intended.
Reviews should be undertaken on a regular basis and also:
- When a new hazard or risk is identified
- Before a change that may introduce new psychosocial hazards, e.g. restructuring, new equipment
- After an incident involving a psychosocial hazard
- If a review is requested by a Health and Safety Representative (HSR)
- If workers indicate that control measures are not effective
Reviews should consult those workers affected by the psychosocial hazards and their representatives and examine whether:
- Control measures have been implemented as planned
- Control measures are effective in both eliminating or minimising the risks
- There are any new hazards or risks that need to be controlled
- Workers have sufficient information and training to carry out their work safely
- Any improvements can be made
If the review indicates that risks are not being effectively managed, go back through the risk management steps and make further decisions about control measures.
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Managing psychosocial hazards at work is a critical component of creating a healthy, safe, and productive workplace that values diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I).
For workers, a psychologically safe and healthy workplace can lead to improved mental and physical health, higher job satisfaction, and greater engagement.
For organisations, effective psychosocial risk management can result in reduced absenteeism and turnover, increased productivity and innovation, and a more positive reputation.
As a trusted DE&I consulting firm with 10+ years of experience, Diversity Australia is well-positioned to support your organisation in building an inclusive and mentally healthy workplace culture.
Our team of highly qualified consultants can work with you to:
- Assess your current policies, practices, and culture using evidence-based tools and frameworks
- Develop a tailored action plan aligned with your organisational goals and values
- Deliver training programs to build awareness, skills, and confidence at all levels of the organisation
- Embed sustainable through our consulting services, including ongoing advice, coaching, and support
If you’re ready to take proactive steps to manage psychosocial hazards at work, contact us today. We have the expertise and experience to guide you through the process, from assessment and planning to training and ongoing support.
